Irene Philippaki-Warburton

The theory of empty categories and the pro-drop parameter in Modern Greek

One of the most promising new developments of recent research into theoretical syntax within the model of Government and Binding (GB) as presented in Chomsky (1981) and (1982) has been the new importance given to the study of languages other than English. This has stimulated a great deal of work into a variety of languages (see, for example, Rizzi, 1982; Borer, 1983; Bouchard, 1984; Huang, 1984 and others). It has also been welcomed by linguists outside the TG tradition. Thus, Comrie, (1984:155) expresses his delight that ‘Chomsky (1981) makes clear that generative grammarians have come to realize that an adequate study of syntax within universal grammar requires the study of languages of different types. Chomskys main concern has always been to formulate a theory that would achieve ‘explanatory adequacy’ by providing a restrictive set of principles which could characterize universally the notion ‘natural language’. However, detailed and in-depth analyses of various languages have revealed that in order to achieve ‘descriptive adequacy’ the theory has to allow for cross-linguistic differences, or ‘parametric variation’. The concept of parametric variation weakens some-what the restrictiveness of the universal grammar (UG) hypothesis and even more so its purported innateness, since the values for the parameters must be arrived at by the child through induction from empirical evidence. Nevertheless, explanatory adequacy may still be attained if the number of parameters is very small and each parameter has few values.

On the boundaries of inflection and syntax: Greek pronominal clitics and particles

A fundamental concern of linguistic theory is the identification of its basic units. The unit of word, as traditionally conceived, unites all levels of linguistic description; Lexicon, where words are both stored and derived; Syntax, the principles that govern the organisation of words into phrases, and Phonology, where words provide the frame for a number of phonological phenomena. The fact that words constitute the meeting point of all three levels makes them sensitive to the different demands of these levels and for this reason words constitute an excellent domain of study in the search for establishing the borders of these levels and their effects on each other.

Moving from theta-positions: pronominal clitic doubling in Greek

Abstract This paper re-examines the doubling of pronominal clitics in Greek. It is argued that clitics are not affixes but full words which move in the syntactic component and (ultimately) target the head of T. As for their position in the phrase marker, it is claimed, following Kayne, R., 1975. French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and (Philippaki-)Warburton [J Ling 13 (1977) 259], that clitics do not head a functional (clitic) projection [in the sense of Sportiche, D., 1992/1996. Clitic Constructions. Ms, UCLA/In: Rooryck, J., Zaring, L. (Eds.), Phrase Structure and the Lexicon. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, pp. 213–276, for instance], but are merged in the internal argument position(s) of V. Being both X 0 and X max (Chomsky, N. 1995. Bare phrase structure. In: Webelhuth, G. (Ed.), Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 383–439), clitics can undergo movement avoiding the Head Movement Constraint. Two alternative solutions of how this movement proceeds are examined and they are both shown to be consistent with our proposal. Furthermore, it is proposed that the relation between the clitic and its DP-double is that of coindexation, with the double occupying an adjunct position, either a remote one (clitic left/right dislocation), or a v P-internal one (doubling without comma intonation). In fact, we attempt to unify the Clitic Left/Right Dislocation and clitic doubling in the sense that both of them involve an argumental clitic. Finally, we show that despite the fact that Greek has clitics in argumental positions, it does not display a number of properties characteristic of polysynthetic languages.